


you made it bearable

by Granspn



Series: slide on the ice [3]
Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:41:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26385820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Granspn/pseuds/Granspn
Summary: taking place sometime between the other two parts, what happens when hawkeye, bj, and trapper all run into each other at the same medical conference"So this was Trapper. BJ got a good look at him while he collected his thoughts. So he was extremely handsome. Whatever. He also was the guy who exacerbated whatever abandonment issues Hawk had already had to such an extreme degree that he’d considered himself at least verging on unlovable. Him getting sent home was also the reason BJ had been sent to Korea in the first place which was the worst thing that ever happened to him, and the reason ever met Hawkeye which was the best thing that ever happened to him."
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, B.J. Hunnicutt/Peg Hunnicutt (referenced), Hawkeye Pierce/ "Trapper" John McIntyre (past)
Series: slide on the ice [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1874662
Comments: 6
Kudos: 60





	you made it bearable

**Author's Note:**

> so, I tried my best to give a fair characterization of everybody… I honestly like him but maybe I’m a little biased against trapper for perhaps obvious reasons, nevertheless I do like the early seasons and some of my all time favorite episodes are from then (tuttle.. yankee doodle doctor.. carry on hawkeye etc) and I just love writing these people finally dealing w their emotions

BJ and Hawkeye had agreed to meet up beforehand, at the bar, and check in together. BJ was wearing black Chuck Taylors in lieu of a red carnation, but figured they would do the trick. It had been three months since he and Peg and Erin had last been out to New York to see Hawk, and he drummed his fingers on the bar in eager anticipation of his arrival. BJ was there first, of course. He wasn’t even early, he was just first. He was nursing his second bourbon and water when another, presumably, doctor took the seat next to him. Tall, and broad, with tawny curly hair, he spoke with a slightly more déclassé Boston accent than Charles when he ordered a dry martini.

“Cheers,” he said to BJ when his drink arrived, and BJ clinked his short glass to his long stemmed one.

“Cheers,” BJ agreed. “BJ.”

“John,” he introduced himself. “You in town for the whole convention?”

BJ laughed, and watched with slight envy as John sipped his martini.

“It’s funny,” BJ said, “I have this– my friend who I’m supposed to be meeting,” he punctuated his thought by pointedly gesturing with his watch, “used to swill those like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Huh,” he said. “I only got one ‘cause I’m feeling sentimental.”

“Well, nothing tugs at the heartstrings like a thoracic surgery conference,” BJ said. John smiled.

“Precisely,” he said, and clinked their glasses again.

“Hey, Beej!” came a voice from behind them. _A voice_ , like it wasn’t obviously Hawkeye.

“Finally,” BJ said, grinning and spinning around to face him, not before clocking a confused expression on John’s face, but being too delighted by Hawkeye’s presence to particularly care. But Hawkeye was frozen and staring at them from a few paces away, looking like someone had just died on his operating table. It was early yet, and the bar was quiet.

“Trap?” Hawkeye all but whispered. _Trap?_

“ _You’re_ Trapper?” BJ asked so fast he worried he’d get whiplash.

“Yeah, who’re you?” Trapper said without taking his eyes off Hawkeye.

“BJ,” BJ said, since he couldn’t think of anything else.

“BJ? Who’s BJ? Hawk, who is this?” For some reason BJ hated hearing Trapper call him ‘Hawk,’ even though everyone did. 

“He’s– Trap– he’s my, we’re– could you two give me five minutes? I’ll be right back. Talk amongst yourselves.” Hawkeye didn’t wait for an answer before turning on his heels and making for someplace else, anywhere else.

“Hawkeye!” BJ called after him, but he was already gone.

So this was Trapper. BJ got a good look at him while he collected his thoughts. So he was extremely handsome. Whatever. He also was the guy who exacerbated whatever abandonment issues Hawk had already had to such an extreme degree that he’d considered himself at least verging on unlovable. Him getting sent home was also the reason BJ had been sent to Korea in the first place which was the worst thing that ever happened to him, and the reason ever met Hawkeye which was the best thing that ever happened to him.

“So who are you, exactly?” Trapper asked him again.

“Hunnicutt,” he said. “BJ Hunnicutt. I replaced you at the 4077th.” Trapper looked him up and down.

“In more ways than one,” Trapper said, sounding more confident in that assumption than BJ thought was really appropriate.

“Hawkeye– he– he needed– hang on, I don’t have to explain anything to you,” BJ said, turning back around the face the bar.

“Hey, pal, it’s not my fault I got sent home. The exact same thing could have happened in reverse.” BJ hated him for being right.

“He– You meant a lot to him, you son of a bitch, you know? Would it have killed you to write him?” _Whoa, BJ, rein it in._ Despite how much he’d hoped that spending time with him would make Hawkeye more rational, it was certainly true that some of Hawk’s hot-headedness had rubbed off on him.

“Life got complicated,” Trapper said. “Things got in the way. And what makes this any of your business, anyway?”

 _The fact that I love him more than you do_ , BJ thought, like this was a competition, and like a quantity existed that could describe how important Hawkeye was to him. Meeting Trapper was like his every fantasy and worst nightmare happening at the same time.

“Well…?” Trapper prompted, after BJ had been silent for too long.

“He’s my best friend,” he said quietly.

“I’m sure,” Trapper said.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, he is. And look, _pal_ ,” BJ went on before Trapper could get a word in, “I get it. I get wanting to go back to civilian life and forgetting about the war as fast as possible. But you left a real person over there! A person that you should’ve known wasn’t about to handle being alone over there all that well.” _How could you forget about him!_ BJ wanted to scream. _He was perfect and unbelievable and he saved everybody’s life every day, mine especially. That’s what makes this my business._

“Of course I knew that, but Hawk’s a big boy,” Trapper said. BJ felt his fists clench at hearing ‘Hawk” again. “What was I supposed to do, huh? I got a wife and kids at home!”

“So?” BJ said, “So do I! We figure it out. We make it work. Peg knows how I feel.”

“Oh, how you feel? She knows how you feel? How do you _feel_ exactly?” Before BJ could construct an answer that wouldn’t get him permanently thrown out of polite society, he felt a hand on his back. He smelled Hawkeye’s aftershave before he saw him. Hawkeye placed himself between their two barstools with a hand each on BJ’s and Trapper’s shoulders.

“Forgive me,” Hawkeye said with as much dramatic flair as he could muster, “but you know how awkward it is to run into your ex while you’re out with the missus.”

Trapper stood up suddenly. “I’m in room six-thirteen. Come find me if you want,” he said, making pointed eye contact with Hawkeye, and left. Hawk sighed and took his seat. BJ tried not to think about the fact that it would still be warm.

“Guess it would be a mitzvah if I went,” Hawkeye muttered. He reached over and drained the rest of BJ’s glass. 

“Shit,” BJ said.

“Right.”

BJ sighed. Hawkeye crossed his arms on the bar and rested his chin on them while BJ ordered them a round of drinks.

“So, how was your trip?” BJ asked at the same time that Hawkeye said, “What did you guys talk about?”

“You, obviously,” BJ said with a small, self-deprecating laugh.

“The talk of the town,” Hawkeye said. “Benjamin Franklin returns to Philadelphia.”

“Rather him than MacArthur,” BJ said. “Where was Franklin Pierce from?”

“New Hampshire,” Hawkeye said, then downed a handful of peanuts. “You know he was a horrible person?” He talked while he chewed. “Fought tooth and nail against the abolition of slavery. Bastard. His father’s name was Benjamin Pierce.”

“Hawkeye.”

“Him, too. Are we gonna talk about what just happened? Because I’m shaking so hard I feel like all my skin is about to peel off.”

Hawkeye had talked to smooth when he’d gotten back that BJ had almost forgotten that he’d probably been having a nervous breakdown in the bathroom while he’d been telling off Trapper. BJ fidgeted with some pretzels, then felt guilty about touching them without taking them, thought he might throw up if he tried to eat, so placed them on top of a napkin so he could keep fidgeting. Eventually he looked up at Hawkeye to find his eyes pleading with him.

“I, uh…” BJ started. “I may have gone in a little hot.”

“Uh-huh,” Hawkeye said. “How unlike you.”

“You’re a bad influence.”

“Notoriously.” 

“I called him a son of a bitch.” That startled Hawkeye into laughing.

“You two probably have a lot in common,” Hawkeye said.

“You think I’m a son of a bitch?”

“No.” Hawkeye smiled sadly and absently fingered an errant nutshell. BJ wanted very badly to kiss him.

“Are you gonna go talk to him?” BJ asked gently. Hawkeye stared, unfocused, at the wall of bottles behind the bar.

“One time,” Hawkeye said without turning to face BJ, “a while before he left, a while before you got there, I cracked. It was the first time I really cracked.” BJ had heard the story from Margaret after the bus. He’d never heard it from Hawkeye.

“I hadn’t slept in I don’t know how long. I was seeing things. Hearing things. I don’t know how to describe it, I was distraught. The highlights tend to be that I sent a telegram to Harry Truman and tried to tow away the latrines in an ambulance, but that’s not what I remember. I just remember feeling so,” he ran a hand over his face as he tried to find the right word. “Miserable,” he finally said. “I’d never been so low. And I became convinced that if I just found out what was causing it, what had started it, that I could stop everything, save everyone.

“Now, on a good day that thought would still pass through my head a couple hundred times, but this was a totally different type of obsession. I hadn’t slept. I wasn’t thinking straight. All I needed to do was sleep…” he trailed off.

“What happened?” BJ said. Hawkeye shook his head slightly.

“Nobody tried to talk to me. Ask me what the problem was, ‘cause everybody just figured I was kidding around. They just let me walk around camp like a goddamn zombie. They let me operate like that. And they just walked on eggshells around me like they were afraid of what they would hit if they started to talk. But there were real mine fields out there, you know? I was just scared.” He stopped again, and stared into his tumbler.

“What happened?” BJ prompted again. Hawkeye took a deep, shaky breath.

“Eventually they sedated me. I was so doped on adrenaline they had to pump a whole drugstore in me.”

“They did what? Who did?” BJ asked, appalled. He knew what he would have done instead.

“It put me to sleep, didn’t it? Trapper and Henry.”

“Jesus, Hawkeye,” was all BJ could say. _I would have talked to you_ , he wanted to say. _I would have made you tell me what was wrong and I would have held you till you fell asleep and when I couldn’t help you I would have at least called Sidney, for God’s sake_. That’s what he had done, of course. He’d screamed at Potter to get Sidney and he’d left patients in post-op to hold Hawkeye’s quivering, crying figure close to him in the O-Club until someone had come to take him to the hospital.

“I think about that sometimes,” Hawkeye said. “What might have gone differently if you had been there.”

“Well, you don’t have to wonder anymore,” BJ said. “I’m here now.” He watched Hawkeye’s posture relax.

“I’m gonna talk to him,” Hawkeye said. “Just not yet.”

They paid their tabs and checked in at the front desk. Hawkeye led them upstairs as close to hand in hand as possible. They had separate rooms booked, of course, but they both set their things down in BJ’s. Hawkeye kissed him almost as soon as they’d closed the door. It was soft, and sad, and salty from the peanuts, and BJ ran his knuckles lightly down Hawkeye’s scruffy face before sitting down on the bed.

“Sometimes I think you have more baggage about him than I do,” Hawkeye said, still standing, staring straight into BJ’s eyes. _Impossible_.

“You have enough baggage about him to line a cargo jet,” BJ said. Hawkeye sat down next to him and took his cheek in his hand so he was looking at him.

“Before I go in there I want you to know that I chose you.” BJ tore his eyes from him and looked down.

“You never chose anything. They threw us together. I’m thankful as hell that they did, but–”

“Beej?” Hawkeye interrupted, “Look at me. I chose you. Not just over him, but over everybody else. I’ll always choose you, okay? You saved me.”

 _No, you saved me_ , BJ thought. “Okay,” he said. BJ tried to tell himself he believed him, but as he sat in the room going crazy over the thought of the two of them talking, he worried that maybe Hawkeye was right about how crazy Trapper made him.

He stared at the ceiling and watched the fan go around and around. He counted one hundred and ten rotations per minute. He leafed through the Bible from the nightstand and cursed the fact that the only person he knew in this godforsaken city was a priest to whom a phone call from him would certainly fall on deaf ears. He started reading the tourist brochure the hotel had left on the desk but had to stop when he saw the name “Benjamin Franklin” too many times. He called Peg, who told him to take it easy, and that maybe being around Trapper for him is what being around her was like for Hawkeye, which shut him up pretty fast. Then he was back to counting ceiling fan spins. 

He couldn’t believe they were alone together. They were together for the first time in forever, the intervening years having been the worst of Hawkeye’s life, and BJ had left them alone. Well, like Trapper had said, Hawk was a big boy. BJ wanted more than anything to know what they were talking about, but at the same time knew he’d want it scrubbed from his memory the moment he found out. He dissected each second he could remember from his brief conversation with Trapper at the bar.It couldn’t have been easy for Hawkeye, falling for people so deep in denial they were actually married with children. For all his free-wheeling and devil-may-care-itude. Hawkeye was the only one who had any idea who he was.

The phone rang, and BJ nearly jumped out of his skin. Hawkeye told him he could come up to Trapper’s room and talk, if he wanted to, and he didn’t even know if it was a good idea since Trapper didn’t even owe him anything, but curiosity got the best of him and he knocked on door six-thirteen and waited. Hawkeye answered, and he tried to read his expression, but in the end all he looked was tired. Trapper was sitting on the bed with his knees up and his back against the headboard looking a little softer than when he’d first seen Hawkeye at the bar. BJ didn’t know what the say, so he just stood there, gleaning what little comfort he could from the feeling of Hawkeye’s knuckles brushing against his. Hawkeye was uncharacteristically quiet.

“Sounds like you’re a very lucky man,” Trapper said suddenly. BJ wasn’t sure what he could say until he knew what they’d talked about. He just stared deer-in-the-headlights style at the both of them and struggled to make noises come out of his mouth. Hawkeye shot Trapper a sharp look, then exhaled sharply, turned to BJ, and planted a purposeful kiss on his lips as if to make a point. Trapper looked remarkably unfazed, almost stoic, while BJ felt his cheeks grow warm.

“You’re okay, Beej,” Hawkeye said, with an encouraging pat on his shoulder, then collapsed down onto the desk chair. There was nowhere for BJ to sit besides the bed where Trapper was, so he opted for the floor, leaning his back against the dresser in between the drawer handles. Trapper propped himself up so they could all see each other.

“You’re in Boston, now, right?” BJ said. It was his custom now to try and fill silences since he knew how much Hawkeye hated them.

“Yep,” Trapper said. “Do you actually care?”

“Not particularly,” BJ answered honestly. He looked over to Hawkeye who was staring intently at the floor. He could hardly imagine the tooth-pulling that must have gone on in order to get him in such a serious mood. 

“Well, Hawk?” Trapper said. _Stop calling him that!_ BJ wanted to yell. _That’s what_ I _call him_. Hawkeye picked lint of his socks, his shoes discarded haphazardly under the desk.

“I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve gathered you all here–”

“Hawkeye!” BJ and Trapper interrupted simultaneously. Hawkeye laughed a little under his breath. He sighed.

“I don’t want you two to hate each other,” he said quietly. “I think in another life you would have gotten along.” BJ knew intellectually that he was probably right. Hawkeye and Trapper had by all accounts been a plenty dynamic duo in their own right. There just wasn’t a world where he and Trapper had known Hawkeye at the same time.

“We don’t have another one, Hawk, you know that,” Trapper said. “Besides, that part of my life is over.”

“ _That_ part–?”

“Beej.”

“Look, Hawk, maybe it’s too little too late, but I’d write you now. I’d write you whenever you wanted! I’d stay friends if it’s all the same to you, and if your _boyfriend_ promises not to stab or stare me to death.” BJ rolled his eyes. _Boyfriend_ did not even begin to describe him.

“Would you both listen to me?” Hawkeye said, rising from the chair. “Trap, I appreciate the gesture. You do what you want.” He started pacing behind the bed and in front of the window. “You know you are two of the kindest, most caring, funniest, most talented people I know? You know I love you both? I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times you’ve saved my life, both of you. So for me, for little old Hawkeye, could you find it in your hearts to get over yourselves?”

Fine. If that’s how he wanted it, BJ wasn’t going to dance around anything for his sake anymore.

“I can’t live the rest of our lives feeling like I’m in his shadow,” BJ said. Hawkeye looked genuinely surprised.

“What have I ever done to make you feel like that’s what you were doing?” Hawkeye said.

“I’ve felt like that from the second I met you!”

“BJ, I missed him by ten minutes! Of course I was upset. But after that? This, this complex you have about being his replacement? Baby, that is all you.” Oh, now he was the one with the complex? BJ couldn’t believe his ears.

“Well, if you wanna be friends I can’t live the rest of my life feeling like I’m in _his_ shadow,” Trapper said.

“Tough,” BJ said. Hawkeye stopped pacing, leaned back, and slid down until he was sitting against the radiator.

“He might be right, Trap,” Hawkeye said. “I am pretty in love with him. Friends I could swing, though.” BJ swallowed. Even though this whole conversation was about Trapper, he could almost forget that he was in the room. When BJ spoke it was only to Hawkeye.

“Why do you want that, though? You should have seen yourself; he wrecked you! He should have known better than to leave like that.” And when he talked about Trapper he was almost talking about himself. “Three days,” BJ said, preempting Hawkeye’s interruption. He’d heard the story enough to know. “I had five minutes. And I told Margaret to talk to you!”

One corner of Hawkeye’s mouth turned up as he rolled his eyes. They’d talked about it to death, that horrible day, those horrible weeks. He knew BJ knew he’d fucked up back then.

“Margaret?” Trapper said. “At least I sent Radar.” Hawkeye barked a bitter laugh.

“Radar went home,” he said. “Margaret…” he drifted off. BJ had heard plenty of horror stories about how Hawk and Trap used to razz the major. He wouldn’t know how to explain their friendship either.

“Hot Lips is whatever,” Trapper said, and BJ groaned and slumped back against the dresser. “Either way, you can’t lay all that on me. How the hell was I supposed to write down how I felt in a stupid note? Anybody could have found it and read it. Anybody could have read any letter I ever wrote you, so whatever got through the censor would have been bullshit anyway!”

“Look,” Hawkeye said, “I didn’t come here to dredge up my years old abandonment issues although I guess it’s inevitable now because you are my years old abandonment issues. Though was it really so insane to think that you might have written me a normal letter one day?”

“Oh, you wanted a normal letter? You really wanted to hear about my life back home? About my kids? About my wife?”

“Of course I did!” Hawkeye said. “I care about you, Trap! I would have read anything you sent me fifty times! I would have read the back of a cereal box if I knew it’d been yours.”

BJ thought his heart was going to explode right out of his chest. Not from jealousy, even though he knew Hawkeye meant what he was saying about Trapper. It just made him love him so much, knowing how love to him meant loving the things you loved, meant making space in his life for them. It was why Hawkeye loved Peg, and Erin, and Mill Valley, even if he couldn’t always see them.

“Keep looking at him like that and you’re gonna get yourself arrested,” Trapper said to BJ, shocking him out of his mad-with-love-for-Hawkeye-Pierce reverie. BJ shook the lovelorn expression on his face.

“Can’t be as bad as this one,” he jerked his thumb at Hawkeye, deflecting with a joke out of habit “when he looks at you like he thinks he’s being subtle–”

“But really he looks like he’s about to bite your bars off,” Trapper said, unable to hold back a hearty laugh. 

“Hey, listen, people already don’t pick up on any of my myriad signals,” Hawkeye defended. “If I was any subtler I’d never get any at all!”

“Listen, Hawkeye,” Trapper said, sitting forward in the bed so they were really facing each other. “I guess I knew we ‘loved each other’ or something, but I didn’t know it was like this serious thing to you. I mean, it was the war. You were such a good friend, Hawk, don’t get me wrong. I woulda gone crazy in that place if it wasn’t for you.” He sighed, and rubbed at his eyes. “I guess I thought we were just doing the whole we’re cold and lonely and away from our wives thing.”

“I never had a wife, Trap,” Hawkeye said. “I had you.”

BJ looked down. That was why he worried. Hawkeye had had Trapper, and then he had had him. He had to wonder if he would have fallen in love with anyone who had come to Korea that day.

“I’m sorry, Hawkeye,” Trapper said. “I think…” he rubbed a hand over his face, “I mean I guess I knew, really, that you were really, I don’t know, like that. But I never coulda admitted it. And there hasn’t been, I mean I haven’t been… You were the only one, man, guy, I mean–”

“Okay, take it easy, Trap, don’t hurt yourself,” Hawkeye said, mercifully. “Besides, for all BJ’s worried all he is is your replacement, he never was. You should’ve seen us, seriously. By the time we’d known each other a week it was like we’d been married twenty years.”

BJ grinned. “What say you, Ferret Face?” he recalled under his breath. Hawkeye looked at him with precisely the look Trapper had described earlier, like if they were alone right now he’d been all over him faster than you could say ‘in two months this place will look like the Top of the Mark.’

“Yeah,” Hawkeye said. “And when I went crazy he got me a shrink instead of just sedating me.”

Trapper immediately refocused. “Oh, so that’s what this is about?” At least BJ was finally starting to glean some of what they’d talked about without him there.

“Yeah,” Hawkeye said. “I guess so. No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“You do realize you just gave every possible answer to that question,” Trapper said, his gaze not leaving Hawkeye.

“I don’t know. Not everything is so black and white.”

“But technicolor is _so_ expensive,” BJ muttered, just loud enough to stop Hawkeye from dwelling on a breakdown.

“Would you not be funny when I’m trying to induce a panic attack, please?” Hawkeye said, finally returning BJ’s grin from before.

“Hey, you ever seen a little movie called _Yankee Doodle Doctor_?” Trapper asked. Hawkeye’s eyes grew wide and he looked like he was about to protest.

“No, no I haven’t,” BJ said, egging Trapper on, sensing that this involved an embarrassing story about Hawkeye.

“No need to get him excited,” Hawkeye said, rising from his warm spot by the radiator, “all the prints were destroyed.” Now he was talking past BJ, even though that remark was ostensibly for his benefit.

“You just know General Clayton kept one for himself…” Trapper started. From there the evening devolved into sharing funny anecdotes, many about Hawkeye and his various idiosyncrasies and of course many attempts to live out his fantasy of being Groucho Marx. They swapped stories about their kids; Trapper had two daughters with a few years on Erin, and for all his purported philandering didn’t seem to love them any less than he should. Hawkeye laid with his head in BJ’s lap while BJ played with his hair, and scolded them when they got too competitive talking about their various rashes of practical jokes. Hawkeye dozed off there, and Trapper caught BJ just watching him as he slept.

“He seems happy,” Trapper said. “He had me worried there, for a second, when he said they put him away.”

“It was scary,” BJ said, and squeezed Hawkeye’s arm, but not hard enough to wake him.

“I’m glad he found you,” Trapper said. His smile was warm, and inviting, and BJ was starting to see what Hawkeye saw in him. 

“I don’t know what I would’ve done without him,” BJ said.

“Yeah,” Trapper said. “Me neither.”

They sat there for a moment, locking eyes in silent understanding of how lucky they’d been to find maybe the one person on Earth capable of getting them through everything. And there he was, sleeping in BJ’s lap, none the wiser and never thinking he was anything special. Idiot. BJ loved him so much.

“We should probably call it a night,” BJ said. “It’s inhumane not to let this one sleep in a real bed.” He shook Hawkeye gently awake. “Time to say goodnight, Gracie.”

“Goodnight, Gracie,” Hawkeye murmured, and pushed himself up using BJ’s shoulders. “Trap,” he said, “You met me at a very interesting time in my life.”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Trapper said, getting up from the bed himself. He shook BJ’s hand. “Good to meet you, BJ. You seem like a nice young man, but if you get Benjamin Franklin here into any trouble you’re gonna have me to answer to.”

“Likewise,” BJ said, and returned the handshake enthusiastically. Then Trapper looked hesitant, but moved to shake Hawkeye’s hand, too.

“That just isn’t gonna cut it, Trap,” Hawkeye said, and pulled him almost gingerly into a hug, like he was worried Trapper was going to recoil. He didn’t. They hugged, and BJ felt like he had the day they’d gone home when Hawkeye and Margaret had kissed for about thirty minutes while he stood there with Charles and Colonel Potter and couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry and did plenty of both that day anyway. When they (finally, finally) pulled apart, Trapper left him with a kiss on the cheek, and Hawkeye looked like he couldn’t tell if it was sad or romantic. Bit of both, probably.

“Let’s go home, Beej,” Hawkeye told him, so he took him.

And the rest of the week they saw Trapper around and it was okay, and they said goodbye again and it was okay, and months down the line Hawkeye was still doing okay and BJ wanted to ask but didn’t want to ask if he was getting letters from Trapper, but he thought maybe he could tell that he was. He didn’t talk about him, but he didn’t _not_ talk about him, like he had before. And BJ was happy for him. Loving Hawkeye meant loving the things that he loved, so now, maybe, BJ loved Trapper a little, too.

**Author's Note:**

> a) the “yes, no, maybe, I don’t know” joke is stolen from gone-too-soon tv sensation dirk gently’s holistic detective agency which has nothing to do with this but was excellent television
> 
> b) “technicolor is so expensive” is from the Marx brother’s movie “the big store” and me and my dad quote it all the time so in it goes
> 
> C) anyway yeah! Just a rambly little thing bc I always wanted to imagine what bj and trapper would be like interacting and also unpacking some of that there baggage we know they have


End file.
